Aaron Elster was 7 when the bombs came. There were thunderous airplanes whooshing over the Sokolow Ghetto in Poland. They brought destruction in their path. Three years later, he stood against a wall with his family. This included his parents. It included an older sister and his 6-year-old sister Sarah. They were waiting to be sent to nearby Treblinka. It was one of the Holocaust’s extermination camps. They were moved as the German army came to liquidate the ghetto. But he escaped. He crawled to the edge of the ghetto. He crossed the barbed wire border and ran for his life. He never saw most of his family again.

Elster’s sister also escaped. She connected with a Polish farmwife who hid her on the property. He was able to locate her. But first, he had spent some time hiding outside in other local farms. He stole food. When the bitter cold arrived, he joined his sister there. For the next two years, Elster lived in the attic of that farmwife’s house. He never left the attic during that time. He survived on soup and a slice of bread. He ate once a day. He couldn’t bathe or brush his teeth. He had no new clothes to change into. And he wasn’t allowed to make any noise. He was covered in lice. He spent his days delousing himself in silence until the war ended. Then he was transferred to a Polish orphanage. He and his sister were eventually smuggled out of Poland and headed to the United States.

Now, Elster tells his story from the safety of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center’s Take A Stand Center. The museum is in Skokie, Illinois. He tells his story as a hologram. The Center is broken into three parts. Guests start in the Abe and Ida Cooper Survivor Stories Experience theater. First-in-the-world technology allows visitors to interact with holograms of 13 Holocaust survivors. Seven of which live in the Chicago area, including Elster. The survivors were filmed in 360 video with more than 100 cameras. It was a process that took about six days—all day—per survivor.

“For me, talking about it was not that difficult,” Elster told Smithsonian.com. “I don’t know why, maybe my skin is too thick. But I know one of the people had to stop recording... Why would you want to stand in front of hundreds of guests and open up your heart and bleed in front of them? Because it’s important. This will exist longer than we will. And a whole new world of young people and adults will understand what people are capable of doing to one another, and that it just takes a little bit of goodness from each person to help change the world for the better.”

After a roughly half-hour hologram experience, guests move into the next part of the exhibit. It is the Upstander Gallery. Here, 40 people are featured as “upstanders.” These are people who are working hard to stand up for human rights and make the world a better place. From there, guests move on to the Take a Stand Lab. It is a hands-on tool that helps anyone become an upstander themselves. The interactive Lab shows people different ways to take action. Then it sends them home with a kit on how to actually do it.

The whole center took three years and about $5 million to create. The jewel of the exhibit is the survivor experience. Before interacting with one of the survivors’ holograms, there’s a five-to-seven-minute video. It is of a person relating their experience of survival through the Holocaust.

“I was sitting here listening to my own story that I’ve told 150,000 times, and suddenly I wanted to cry,” he said. “Sometimes I can just tell it like a story, and other times it becomes real. I’ve accepted the fact that my parents and my aunts and uncles were killed. But I had a little sister, Sarah, who loved me so much. I created this terrible image of how she died, and that causes me such pain. Do you have any idea how long it takes to die in a gas chamber? It takes 15 to 20 minutes before your life is choked out. Think about it. A 6-year-old little girl, people climbing on top of her in order to reach out for any fresh air that still exists in the room. They lose control of all their bodily functions and they die in agony. This is what you carry with you. It’s not a story. It’s reality.”

Another survivor, Sam Harris, described the experience of carrying thousands of bodies out of Auschwitz. "It’s impossible to believe, with what we went through, that we could still be here as human beings to talk about it," he said. "Maybe that’s why we were saved. As I watch [my portion of the experience], it brings back memories to my mind about what it was like. I was four years old when Hitler came. If I let myself go, this whole room would be flooded with tears.”

“When we’re gone, what happens next?” Elster said. “Do we become one sentence in the history of World War II? They killed Jews and that’s it? Or are we still alive, in essence, to tell people what happened, how they can help, how each and every one of them can make a difference. We keep saying ‘never again,’ but we have to remind the world what happened, and what could happen again, and why it shouldn’t happen to anybody. We’re still killing one another. So our hope is to make sure that young people understand what human beings are capable of doing to one another, and [that] we expect them to be upstanders. We expect them to make a difference, because they can."

We are in the golden age of technology that's amazing. I can't believe that's possible

NoahN-bru

5/17/2019 - 08:53 a.m.

I agree that its pretty cool but... the only reason its there is because it happened. It's awful that something like that ever happened and it shouldn't have. Hopefully something like that wont occur in the future.

Joeyw-bru

1/18/2019 - 03:10 p.m.

Talking to holocaust survivors. That's so amazing. I would love to go and see it. You could learn more about Hitler and how they escaped. You could learn about what it felt like being in there.

TylerV-dec

1/18/2019 - 10:10 p.m.

I think that the visitors will benefit from interacting with the holocaust exhibit by knowing more about history. I think it is terrible that people had to live this way just to live.

ZaineI-dec

1/23/2019 - 09:35 a.m.

I think people will learn from this. They will get to pretty much speak to people that lived through it.

TorresA-dec

1/23/2019 - 09:35 a.m.

How is that possible that's amazing.I never thought that we would be able to do that.

Annabel-E2

1/24/2019 - 09:27 a.m.

I think that this is a really sad story for the boy, but it is great for people to learn about these things. I hope we can avoid persecution of people or groups of people in the future. The exhibit will teach people many life lessons.

jordanw-orv1

1/29/2019 - 02:20 p.m.

I personally like the way our technology is forming. I feel like it helps mankind to learn and progress through itself. Especially what we are using it for. Like this I think mankind is benefiting through this because it helps us learn more about this past issue and how to not cause it again.

karlised-orv

2/01/2019 - 12:37 p.m.

They will benefit because what better way too learn about the Holocaust then from the people that wen through it? You get the real story instead of someones thought on it.

nathanr-orv

2/04/2019 - 02:58 p.m.

They will see that it was a very hard and scary time in life for those people and you could learn from there experience.